Okay. So what exactly does that mean? Not exactly what you’d expect. Though evolutionists will try, and have tried, to twist these findings to prop up their power, and will probably say something along the lines of, “See this is proof that we’re right about the Big Bang being a purely materialistic event. Science predicted it, and we’ve seen it. So we’re right. And you’re wrong.”

Not so fast. Verification is a multi-faceted thing, and evolutionists have been getting away with what I would call “verification extrapolation” or “truth by association” for too long. For instance, just because natural selection is a proven fact (which it is), that doesn’t mean that natural selection is a mechanism capable of producing all the variety of kinds we currently see. To extrapolate the verification of one part of your theory into a blanket approval of your entire system of beliefs is at the very least naïve. It might even be called dishonest.

So first off, let’s determine what the detection of gravitational waves (should it hold up to scrutiny) does not prove.

For one, it does not rule out an act of special creation. It would actually support the likelihood of an immediate act of creation. Consider for a moment that very many evolutionists hated the Big Bang theory for that very reason. The Big Bang presupposes that there must have been a time when nothing existed. It assumes that time and space had a beginning.

. . . The big bang is not the only framework available for understanding the history of the universe. Plasma cosmology and the steady-state model both hypothesise an evolving universe without beginning or end.1

“Without beginning or end.” That allows the evolutionist to continue his idolatry of matter. As Carl Sagan loved to put it: “The cosmos [matter] is all that is, was, or ever will be.” Not according to the Big Bang theory. Matter had a beginning.

So what began it? Was something there before it? That’s not such a stupid idea. Can something come from nothing of its own accord? That doesn’t seem reasonable. But, then again, I’m just an ignorant Christian. I don’t have the same faith in the miraculous power of random chance that all the reason-thumping philosopher kings do.

But there is another crucial point to be made here. The existence of gravitational waves does not prove that the evolutionary scientists’ time-frame is correct either. In fact, it destroys the credibility of the evolutionary time-frame.

Consider for a momet what the Big Bang theory actually postulates: all matter was at one point smashed together in a single point of pure energy (kind of like a “Let there be light” kind of moment or something). Then that point was instantaneously inflated (kind of like a “God stretched the heavens out like a curtain” kind of moment or something). During that inflationary period, time did not function the way it currently does. At all. Things were expanding faster than the speed of light.

In fact, even if you believe the evolutionary time frame, there are stars that are so far away from us, we shouldn’t be able to see their light yet (they are more than 14 billion light-years away from us). But we can. Why? Because some crazy non-Newtonian stuff happens when you start talking about stretching the very fabric of space.

Let’s try to understand something about time. It doesn’t exist in a black hole. At all. Stephen Hawkings’ elegant mathematics concerning black holes resulted in what should have been an unsurprising realization—time is dependent on space. The bigger the space, the “longer” the time. When space constricts down to a singularity—say in a black hole … or right before a Big Bang—time is basically a non-factor. Because it takes no time to span the entire distance of that system. Time inflates with space. Again, this is not that weird. And it doesn’t feel weird to us either. Because time is always functioning in a constant linear fashion within your system of observation for any given time.

But when you start talking about universal space-time, things get really zonky. Einstein knew this. And lots of scientists say they know this. Yet they act like starlight and the expansion of the universe conform to the same blockheaded linear and uniform mechanics as the physics problems I did in high school. And that’s just stupid.

But evolutionists are bound to that simple-minded uniformitarian Newtonian celestial mechanic. Because the thorniest part of the Big Bang theory is the very “inflation” that these gravitational waves evidence. Inflation basically says the universe at its current size could have happened in basically no time at all. (Maybe in a single twenty-four hour period when the stars and the heavens were formed by God? Sure, why not …) The New Yorker explains:

New physics . . . might imply that the universe expanded in size by over thirty orders of magnitude in a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang, increasing in size by a greater amount in that instance than it has in the fourteen billion years since . . .

Yeah. Except for one small detail. If inflation on that order is possible, why even include “the fourteen billion years since”? Those years aren’t necessary (like Newtonian physicists once thought they were) in order to explain the size of the universe at its current velocity of expansion. You’re overdetermining the question at that point, you see. You are positing a theory that wouldn’t take fourteen billion years, but refusing to give up your time frame. Occam’s razor condemns you.

Anytime a creationist starts talking about a young universe, an evolutionist astronomer is there to tell him how starlight has traveled on a uniform Newtonian path to us over the past fourteen billion years. And they know this because the expansion of the universe, and red-shifted light, and the Hubble constant, and stars are like really really far away, and blah blah blah.

I have always retorted with a very simple counter-argument: explosions do not conform to linear curves of expansion. They are logarithmic. Meaning they expand quickly at the beginning, but decelerate rapidly. So if the Big Bang is true, why do scientists use the velocity of the Hubble Constant as if the universe has always moved at that velocity? I thought this was a Big Bang, not a Big Drift. Seriously. It’s stupid. But they won’t give it up no matter what. Because they need that time.

Big Bang inflation theory (confirmed by this most recent piece of evidence) just destroys the idea of a slow-grown universe. Who cares if a star is fourteen billion light years away? That just means that light traveling within the current space-time would take fourteen billion years to travel that distance. It apparently could have gotten there in far less than fourteen billion years though if the universe expanded faster than the speed of light at one time. In fact, that same light might have always been visible everywhere, because it was once jammed up against everything else in a space smaller than an electron. When space expanded, that light stayed visible like a string stretching behind a rolling ball of yarn. I’m really sorry if that shatters the simple-minded theories of evolutionists, but they need to learn to suck it up and be consistent with their science.

Anyway, don’t let anyone beat you over the head with this new discovery. The same article in TheNew Yorker that attempted to explain the vagaries of the new physics also had this to say in the end:

For some people, the possibility that the laws of physics might illuminate even the creation of our own universe, without the need for supernatural intervention or any demonstration of purpose, is truly terrifying.

Don’t patronize us. This recent finding proves no such thing. And to appropriate it for that purpose is disingenuous. We’re not terrified. You are apparently terrified that you might have to explain evolutionary theory in a young universe.

But science has come no closer to explaining how everything got here. All it has confirmed is that, at one time, there was nothing. And it has also confirmed that all the something we now see could have gotten here in no time at all. Which is pretty much exactly what God said happened.